Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1-19)
PROFESSOR GRAHAM
ZELLICK, MR
COLIN ALBERT,
MS KAREN
KNELLER AND
MR JOHN
WEEDEN CB
10 OCTOBER 2006
Q1 Mr Winnick: May I take this opportunity,
Professor Zellick, to welcome you and your colleagues. We have
a number of questions, which we believe are very important, regarding
the work of your organisation. I wonder if you would be good enough
in the beginning to introduce your colleagues.
Professor Zellick: Thank you very
much, Chairman. On my far left is John Weeden, who appeared last
time we came before the Committee—John Weeden has been a
Commissioner for four years and has taken a lead within the Commission
on historic sex abuse cases, which I know you are interested in—and
Karen Kneller, who is our Director of Casework, who joined us
just over a year ago from the Crown Prosecution Service. On my
right is Colin Albert, who is Director of Finance and IT, the
Accounting Officer and chairs the senior management team and who
has been with us for over two years. That completes the line-up.
Q2 Mr Winnick: We have received,
of course, your memorandum for the Committee, Professor Zellick.
I wonder if there is any need for you to make any opening remarks,
but if you wish to do so, of course.
Professor Zellick: No, thank you,
Chairman.
Q3 Mr Winnick: We will go straight
to questioning. We are in some difficulty today over time, but
we hope to cover the most important questions. When you last appeared
before this Committee you had been in the post a very short time,
some two months. You have now been Chairman of the Commission
for nearly three years. I do not know whether it seems a long
three years to you, but you will soon tell us. It is a leading
question, as they say in your profession: what do you regard as
your greatest achievements and what do you think you have been
less successful in doing?
Professor Zellick: The Commission
has undergone, in recent times, the most fundamental changes to
which any organisation could be subjected. That is an indication
of what I found after a while, having been Chairman of the Commission.
It was not apparent to me when I was last here, as you say, having
been in post only six or so weeks, but it did become clearer to
me over time that we were not appropriately organised to do the
work that we had to do in the way that was most effective and
most efficient and that significant change was required, and we
have embarked upon that programme of change, which is not only
unprecedented within the Commission but, I think, could be regarded
as unusual for any organisation, public or private, and that is
ongoing. The other factor is that we have throughout this period—and
it was very different originally—struggled with severe financial
pressures, which added urgency to the changes upon which we have
embarked. I will be very happy to elaborate on any of that, but
that is my first attempt to respond to your question.
Mr Winnick: I am going to ask Jeremy
Browne to ask you a number of questions.
Q4 Mr Browne: Professor Zellick,
they lead on directly from what you were just describing. You
used the word "fundamental" to describe the changes
that have taken place. Would you tell us whether the initiative,
in terms of the review for these changes, came from the Government
or internally from the Commission and what the cost was of embarking
on the process?
Professor Zellick: Entirely and
exclusively from within the Commission is the answer to your first
question. When you ask about the costs, of course there is very
considerable cost within any organisation when you embark upon
a process of fundamental change because it consumes considerable
capacity and resource, which you have to weigh against the daily
work that you have to do, particularly when you have backlogs
and when you are dealing with the kind of sensitive and important
casework that faces us. I suspect, though, you are thinking in
cash terms, are you?
Q5 Mr Browne: Yes, rather than emotional,
although you could describe that if you wanted to. For example,
the pressure on the overall budgets of the Commission, you could
give us an indication of how much was spent on external consultants?
Professor Zellick: The external
consultants concerned are not particularly keen for me to tell
you precisely how much it cost.
Q6 Mr Winnick: Should we accept that?
Professor Zellick: Let me just
say a little more and then, Chairman, I am very much in your hands.
Let me say to you that what we paid was a fraction of the commercial
cost of the consultancy by a factor of five or ten. We paid between
a fifth and a tenth of what it would normally have cost for the
exercise that was done for us. If you want me to go further, I
can either send you a note about the actual cost, if you think
it is of particular interest to you. If you want to press me to
reveal the figure in public, I will do so.
Q7 Mr Winnick: We will not press
you today, for the reservations that you have given. However,
that should not be taken as a final verdict. The Committee may
well in private deliberation ask for the information and, if we
receive it, we will decide whether it should go into the public
domain or not, but at this stage, for the reasons that you have
just given us, we will not press you.
Professor Zellick: Let me say,
to give you the information would reflect well on the Commission,
so if it were left entirely to me I would be only too pleased
to let you know how little we paid for a magnificent piece of
work.
Q8 Mr Browne: I am curious to know
why the consultants only charged five to 10% of the going rate.
Will you negotiate on my behalf next time I have to engage any
people?
Professor Zellick: Let us talk
about that. They made an investment because they found this a
particularly interesting, exciting and worthwhile project. They
knew that there was no way in which the Commission could afford
their normal rates but they felt that it was in their interests
(and I cannot really speak for them beyond saying that) for their
people to be exposed to this particular exercise.
Q9 Mr Browne: Did you find their
input useful? Would you be able to give us an indication, for
example, of how many of their recommendations you accepted and
whether you rejected any of them?
Professor Zellick: We have accepted
almost everything. I will pass it to colleagues in a moment to
go into greater detail, if you wish. We accepted nearly all their
recommendations. There were a handful where they said, "We
have not been here long enough to investigate fully these particular
matters, but we would suggest you think about them further",
and there was a handful where they thought that progress could
be made and I think we would say that we have done it in a slightly
different fashion.
Q10 Mr Browne: Would you give us
an example maybe of a key recommendation that they made that was
useful and positive that you accepted which otherwise the organisation
may not have taken on board or decided to go down that path?
Professor Zellick: The two fundamental
areas were these. First of all, we had a total absence of proper
management and supervision within the Commission, it was an almost
entirely flat structure, and what we have now done is organised
our Case Review Managers into teams, each team headed by a group
leader and each group leader reporting to the Director of Casework.
So, for the first time, we have, as you would expect to find in
any organisation, but the Commission did not previously have,
a proper internal structure for supervision and support for the
work that staff do.[1]
That was absolutely key to everything that followed, and that
has been in place now for a few months. The other thing is a much
more sensitive and sophisticated method of categorising cases
in order to promote greater efficiency and to complete cases more
rapidly without compromising quality.
Q11 Mr Browne: Do you think the overall
effect of the review has been to increase operational efficiency
or to reduce costs? They are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
You may think you managed to achieve both simultaneously, but
you are under financial pressure, but you are also very frank
about the limitations, organisationally, that you had before,
and so I suppose it is just an assessment of whether the process
enabled you to do the same amount of work better or whether it
gave you extra organisational capacity.
Professor Zellick: The purpose
was to give us greater organisational capacity to ensure that
cases did not drift off unsupervised and not prosecuted with sufficient
vigour and, overall, to increase our capacity in the hope that
we would erode backlogs and not keep people waiting for inordinately
long periods of time. I do not altogether understand the distinction
that you make between the two, but that was its primary purpose.
We are reasonably confident that that will be the outcome, but,
of course, it is too early to say because these measures have
been in place for only a matter of weeks or months.
Q12 Ms Buck: You just mentioned the
issue of backlogs. I note in your memorandum that you actually
give two indications of the length of time it would take to clear
the backlog. At one point you mentioned the figure of five years
and at another 12 months. I wonder if you could explain for us
what the variation is, why there are two estimates, whether you
are actually talking about different baseline figures?
Professor Zellick: I think we
must be, and I think I would need to be directed to the particular
passages where we appear to be saying fundamentally different
things.
Q13 Ms Buck: In paragraph 2.13, the
figure of 12 months is mentioned and in paragraph 5.7 it is five
years for the changes in casework practice to have an impact on
the backlog of cases?
Professor Zellick: I think we
are saying different things: 2.13 is what I was trying to say
a moment ago, that it will take some time, and this says 12 months,
for us to be sure that the benefits are materialising and are
beginning to eat into the problems and doing what we hope. The
other figure is the real figure for eliminating or diminishing
waiting times and backlogs on current and projected resources.
Q14 Ms Buck: So, you are saying that,
despite what appears to be a persistent and hard core block of
cases, at the end of five years you would expect there to be no
backlog at all?
Professor Zellick: We are now
closing more cases than we are receiving each year, and the consequence
of that is that over time (and we have made a prediction) the
backlog will be entirely eroded. I very much hope, and ultimately
I am an optimist, that there will be some additional funding to
allow us to erode those backlogs more rapidly because my colleagues
and I regard those waiting periods as wholly unacceptable.
Q15 Ms Buck: Are you basing, therefore,
the timescale that you are mentioning on being able to secure
additional resources?
Professor Zellick: No, we are
not, but they are the figures based on what we have and what we
expect to receive, what we have been led to believe we will receive,
and they do not assume any increase. An increase of half a million
or so pounds a year would transform the situation.
Mr Winnick: We will take note of that.
Q16 Ms Buck: That slightly begs the
question why, if the environment that you were in before the present
reductions was more generous, there was still a backlog. If you
are talking now about a relatively small incremental addition
being sufficient, why was it not sufficient before?
Professor Zellick: First of all,
if you look at the funding trend, it is quite significant, and
the figures that you have before you do not take into account
inflation. If you factor in the GDP inflator you will see that
the reduction in funding is very considerable indeed. Our previous
estimates, or predictions, of how long it would take to erode
the backlog were based on a level of funding which simply was
not borne out in practice. We sustained in-year reductions, it
required us at one stage to impose a complete moratorium on any
staff recruitment at all, so that, far from moving to our objective
of having 50 Case Review Managers in post, we could not even replace
those who left, and so the number fell quite dramatically and
our ability to close cases was severely compromised. One has to
go back much further to find out how the problem arose in the
first place, and so forth. I can give you purported explanations
for it, but I think at this point it is probably not very fruitful
to do that.
Mr Weeden: I wonder if I could
add one comment on that. When I joined the Commission in September
2002 we then already had a plan where we expected to be down to
our minimum level of waiting times by March 2006; so we did have
a plan and would have expected to have been in a very good position
as regards waiting times several months ago from today. Unfortunately,
because of the financial pressures that Professor Zellick has
described, that date went out of the window and now it is five
years away from 2006 and not March 2006.
Professor Zellick: If I may just
point out, it is worth emphasising that it is only a small proportion
of our cases that are subjected to these unfortunate delays. The
vast majority of applications are dealt with much more speedily
and within a timeframe that, I think, everyone would regard as
entirely appropriate and acceptable.
Q17 Ms Buck: I was just about to
ask you that, because I think that is exactly the point, and again
it is drawn out in the memorandum, that it will be the more complex
cases that are subject to the delay.
Professor Zellick: Yes.
Q18 Ms Buck: In looking forward to
having a strategy to deal with the backlog will you make sure
that you do not end up reinforcing that trend and actually trying
to reduce the backlog by top-slicing the simplest cases and always
ending up with a kind of tail of the most complex cases that you
do not attempt to deal with?
Professor Zellick: I am sure we
will not do that. I do not know whether the Director of Casework
wants to add anything on that, but that is not a temptation, I
think, to which I think we would fall prey.
Q19 Ms Buck: How can you avoid it?
Professor Zellick: By having in
place, as we do have in place, appropriate allocation mechanisms,
because otherwise you can get the whole thing out of kilter. There
is an argument for saying, and we have debated it many times,
that one should not draw any distinctions between the length and
complexity of cases and treat everything as it comes in through
the door. The consequence of that would be that we would have
an even longer backlog of cases: the number of cases in the queue
would be very much greater. One struggles with these difficulties
all the time, and we are very mindful of them, but I am certain
we will not let what you say happen. We simply will not let that
happen.
1 Note by witness: There was hitherto support
for individual case reviews, but a formal structure for general
purposes was lacking. Back
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